Yes I agree and before it is said, I know that nobody wants mental gurning either!

However making the appropriate faces is a part of the dance, a blank expression doesn't convey any character in the dance and I think he would have been even better had Aliona worked on it and tried to bring some expression out.

Don't get me wrong I don't blame him - it must take a heck of a lot of concentration to remember it all!

I'm not applying sexist reasons for voting. I'm looking at 13 series of Strictly, how and why people vote for the contestants they do. There are more examples of what I'm talking about than I can care to remember, and also plenty of instances of extremely technically gifted female celebs who the audience did not engage with at all.

Anyone has the right to vote for whoever they want, for whatever reason they want. I'm not saying otherwise. But when Jay displayed less showmanship - as exemplified by his show dance (see the judges' comments) - than his rivals on Saturday, you do start to wonder … and that's got nothing to do with bitterness.

SCD isn't a dancing competition. It's about celebrities learning to dance, and we are invited to engage with them as personalities as much as dancers. And it's not 'sexist' to say that women with brilliant technical ability but no distinctive traits as a 'character' struggle much more than male contestants do. It's the way it is.

Really? Is that why, up until this year, the number of male and female celebs winning was absolutely even? (And it's only not even this year because it's an odd-numbered year and it physically can't be even.)

It was good but now too overhyped. Shame but there you are

I don't think it's sexist to say that girls or motherly types were going to like to Jay and vote for him. All contestants male or female are going to have people voting for different reasons, and not just the dancing.

I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that Kellie or Georgia aren't decent human beings.

I can only speak for myself and I will freely admit that I haven't bothered to watch for the last 4 weeks, but the other dancers PERFORMED. Jay danced. Danced very well, but without passion, or, any emotion really. To sell one must emote, and no, I'm not advocating 'gurning', but a dance is just a dance without emotion.

Er, no, I just said that Jay is.

Your style of posting is strangely familiar . Sorry, way off topic.

I don't know how, but that's neither here nor there.

I think that's because they picked key elements from it which do stick out but as a whole there was quite a lot of original steps. I've danced the stage version of it (only in a school production) and that's radically different.


Not everyone wants to see in your face project it to the back row of the theatre even though the camera is only 2ft away from you and while you're doing that, dance at 150mph and grimace and gurn like you're entering a competition at the end of Blackpool Pier not the Winter Gardens dancing.

Ballroom and Latin dances have the single most over exaggerated facial expressions than any other genre of dance I've either watched or reviewed for some reason. It's unnatural and quite often looks utterly ridiculous.77
And there were plenty of people who saw emotion in Jay's performances. That's why dance is subjective and why people are told to vote for their favourites.

Duplicate.

The boy couldn't win so he carried on regardless. He had to endure far more negativity and criticism than anybody else and why was that? Simply because he was so good

I don't think Jay has endured anything like the kind of negativity I've seen on here directed at Kellie and also Kevin. (And I'm not speaking as a fan of either)

And no wonder Jay was so good when he was a trained dancer.

But why say the boy couldn't win when 'the boy' was destined to win from very early on anyway?

'The boy' is a 25 year old man who has travelled the world and fronted a very successful (& not exactly quiet) boyband for years before Strictly - he's not a child. He doesn't need infantilised - he deserves a wee bit more respect than that. It's humiliating the way people are treating him like he's a child - he's a grown man.

As was Kellie a trained dancer. You could see that in her Charlston. Yes, Jay has endured a lot of nastiness but he's enjoying being a winner and a popular 'boy'

Really don't like the face pulling - it's certainly not needed on a TV show with the camera so close to people's faces. Can't see why Craig prefers a 'theatrical' style on a TV show.

I liked Jay's under-stated style and his dances nearly always improved on 2nd viewing - can't be said for some of the other dances.

That may be why he had so many viewings on YouTube - people who hadn't recorded Strictly but wanted to watch him again.

Now I really liked Georgia and by the end thought she was great - better than Kellie who to me 'performed' rather than 'danced', though entertaining to watch.

But I liked Jay's dancing best - he showed emotion through his dancing.

I don't see the negativity on some of these threads would affect him, but some of the things in the newspapers about Jay and others on the show have been unpleasant. And some of the remarks and actions on the show itself to Jay and others must have been hard to take.

He was no more a "trained dancer" than Kellie, Helen or Georgia were. In fact, considering both Helen and Kellie went to far more "prestigious" stage/theatre schools, he could say his "training" wasn't as "good" as theirs.


Have to say this does puzzle me. He's fairly introverted and seems to be uncomfortable on his own being interviewed as opposed to when he was with his four band mates but I've never got the referring to him as a boy thing.

I guess that's probably got a lot to do with Tess Daly "mothering" him whenever she spoke to him and treating him like a four-year-old instead of a man. He's quite clearly a fairly strong willed young man with the confidence to plough his own dance path against all calls for him to "perform" which is often just a synonym for Craig wanting an over the top theatrical style of projection.

Thank you. I'm a huge fan but it's so cringeworthy how some of his fans do this ; not only cringeworthy but annoying 😒😒 I believe he'll cringe himself if he knew this.

Like give him some credit and stop baby-ing him 😒😒.

Late to see this I was far from being disappointed with the result but I was over the moon when he was revealed to be the winner yes the final didnt go the best for him on the night but for me based on the whole series Jay fully deserved his win he was the best dancer and the public agreed.

The only thing on the final night I was disappointed with was the judges

I don't think scared is the right word, but aliona said on ITT the week after the jive that they'd royally ballsed it up in all the dress and band runs, and the only time it had gone exactly right was on the live show - and then Jay said on Chris Evans last Monday that he didn't need the extra stress in a 3-dance week of worrying about getting it right, because getting it wrong would spoil it for them and the audience ( I'm paraphrasing here) so they decided to leave it there and do something else. Fair enough, in my opinion.